Review: Bancone, Covent Garden

Crab and gazpacho

Crab and gazpacho

Such a range of top-notch well-priced pasta places in the city these days. Mostly thanks to Padella, who – whether they were the original or not – certainly put the spotlight on the format and spawned the repeats. It works like this: small hand-printed menu, handful of simple starters, handful of simple yet beautifully executed pasta dishes, two desserts, negronis and a small wine list, keenly priced.

Bancone is aiming for a chicker look, but basically the same idea. Hmm. Chicker? Chicer? Chiccer? How the heck do you spell “more chic”?!?

Anyway, it’s nice. My burrata was paired with peas, cucumber and mint, actually a nice marriage and a new one to me. Maureen’s white crab meat salad with watermelon gazpacho was a bit less impressive. The gazpacho was more of a dressing, and as such light on flavour. So it was some white crab meat on a bed of avocado. It was fine.

Burrata n peas

Burrata n peas

My pasta was probably the best dish; rosemary braised rabbit stirred into tagliatelle. The meat was unctuous and the herbal flavour powerful good. Very nice. Maureen’s tagliolini with razor clam, lime and bottarga was an odd one. Sounds good on paper, but the silky buttery sauce rapidly became clammy on the pasta and was all overly rich and creamy for razor clams. Not the greatest pairing.

That said, I don’t want to imply that Bancone was terrible. It was all very edible. Just not as deft and brilliant as some of the other places working this “modern pasta resaurant” schtick. At £28 for three courses before drinks, it’s also pretty sensibly priced.

Razor clam pasta

Razor clam pasta

Reykjavik eats

Matur og Drykkur

Matur og Drykkur

We had a few dinners and brunches in Reykjavik, so if you are interested in some tips then this might be useful.

Let’s start with the star of the show. Find your way to Skal! in the foodhall at the end of Laugavelar. It’s mostly counter dining, and small plates. But they are veeeery good, a match for a lot of good stuff in London. The stand-out dish was a beautifully chargrilled piece of arctic char. This fish is ubiquitous in Iceland, but in five attempts we never had a piece treated as excellently as this. They are serious about their drinks too. All natural wines, and really a bit on the rustic side. Much better are the cocktails, including some great house inventions with a real enthusiast’s cornucopia of strange syrups, ferments and shrubs. Lovage daquiri was superb.

Char at Skal

Char at Skal

At the other end of the spectrum, Matur ad Drykkur boasts a six course tasting menu and plenty of strong reviews, but to my thinking it’s mutton dressed as lamb. Everything is achingly hipster. The “two starters” were two canapes really, a nibble of cured arctic char and another of cured lamb. Then some tempura seaweed, a chewy green strip in oily batter with soy sauce to dip. Halibut soup was a creamy affair, elegant enough and well made. The sea bass main was a nice enough bit of fish with a good celeriac mash. Two desserts bizarrely came together and were typical ice cream & sorbet splodges with forms of granola on top as a lazy kind of “texture”.

Grillmarket was somewhere in the middle. It’s a big barn that slurps up a lot of tourists, but the meat-heavy fare is at least flavoursome and well executed. Full disclosure: they do a mean jalapeno margarita that we guzzled extensively. So we were inclined to be happy! The food isn’t bad at all, but no better than the better kind of chain restaurant would put out.

Let’s end with a breakfast treat! Creme brulee doughnuts at the DEIG bakery towards the harbour. The doughnut and filling were splendid, but crowned by the brulee topping – they blowtorch the sugar coating right in front of you and it certainly had a great bitter-toffee crunch.

And just to avoid your disappointment. The “world famous” Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur hotdogs are a perfectly good snack for about £3 but really, don’t expect fireworks. It’s just a jolly good cheap hotdog.

Creme brulee donut

Creme brulee donut

Review: The Palm, Froxfield

Really quick one. The Palm is an Indian restaurant, one of those odd ones that is planted in a totally random location along a quiet stretch of an A-road, in this case the A40 in Wiltshire.

The incongruity of the starkly modernist (circa 1990) building with bold colours, magnificent light fittings and abstract wall art… and a hand car-wash next door. It has to raise a smile.

The food is classic British curry house cooking. But it’s of the first order, with really distinctive and rich curry gravies, good quality meats and deeply aromatic spicing. Maureen’s lamb curry was the best of the picks. My “royal” dish of duck and lamb was perhaps a bit on the sweet-and-sticky side, you know, where the sour note meant to balance out the sweetness is instead just a bit cloying. That’s picky, as I certainly ate as much as I could. The aubergine side dish was superb, definitely in the same league as Dastaan’s.

To cut a long story short: if you ever find yourself in rural Wiltshire somewhere around Marlborough, The Palm is probably as good a choice as any.

Review: Fiume, Battersea

Aubergine n radishes

Aubergine n radishes

The river front at Battersea Power Station is a very nice place to be now – as you’d hope, given the number of multi-million pound apartments surrounding you on all sides. It has an array of places to eat and we’ve been recommended No 29 and Wright Bros to try, but on this occasion we went with Italian; Fiume.

Burrata with tomatoes and a pile of watercress was okay, but looked as though as much care had gone into it as I put into a rushed lunch before a meeting at work. Maureen’s pile of aubergine with radishes and hazelnuts was better.

Cod

Cod

My baked cod was rather over-roasted, so there wasn’t too much left to love about the sturdy piece of white fish in tomato and olive sauce. Maureen did rather better with a cacio e pepe loaded up with generously grated black truffle. This was a well-made pasta, good silky consistency to the sauce and very nice use of truffle. Good good.

Tiramisu for dessert came in an individual metal bowl, had a nice punch of marsala in the sponge but was heavy on the cocoa powder topping. It all ftuck to thu rooth ov my mouf! Maureen’s pannacotta was a wobbly well-set pudding surrounded by gooey morello cherries. It was fine.

Overall Fiume just doesn’t feel like a place where a lot of love goes into the food, and in a few dishes it really shows. Especially galling at £40 for three courses before drinks (to be fair, you’re somewhat paying for the location). I’ll be trying all the other places at Battersea Power Station before I come back to this one.

Cacio e pepe e TRUFFLE

Cacio e pepe e TRUFFLE

Review: Kolamba, Soho

Mackerel croquettes

Mackerel croquettes

Typical. You wait ages for great Sri Lankan food, and then two come along at once.

Kolamba is on Kingly Street. That weird back alley behind Regent Street that really should just be full of the wheelie bins and detritus of all the big flagship stores whose staff exits emerge onto it, but instead is lined with some pretty decent places to eat. I’ve a sneaking suspicion Kolamba is the best of them.

You know the deal with Sri Lankan cuisine. BRIGHT flavours. SERIOUS spicing. BOLD colours. HARMONY of sweet/hot/sour/bitter. It’s basically the perfect casual dining cuisine for anyone who just loves their food to explode with flavour. Kolamba does Sri Lankan pretty much perfectly.

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish

We snacked on fried up pieces of cuttlefish doused in a fiery hot butter and served with cool slices of bright green mild chilli. There was an amazing fermented chilli relish that might have gone with this, or with the little mackerel croquettes, I’m not sure.

Oh let me talk about the date and lime chutney! I mean, it’s totally unsophisticated. Mash up dates with limes and chilli. You can go and make some yourself. Doesn’t make it any less brilliant, with everything. I really liked their take on a seeni sambal as well. I’m used to a sticky-sweet onion flavour, but instead this was heavy on the fish paste and somehow came out with a funky blue-cheesey flavour that was very good with a mouthful of curry.

The goat curry was excellent, a very well built curry gravy and sturdy flavourful goat chunks. Jackfruit curry also good, maybe a tad less exciting. Pineapple and aubergine curry another explosion of flavour, maxed on the sweet but with enough hot-sour to balance. Good hoppers. Very good pulau rice.

We basically scoffed everything and went away happy, our mouths singing a spicy tune for hours after. Probably £30 each before drinks (but we guzzled a couple of good cocktails each, which pushed the bill up a notch). Excellent place to know about, for when you’re in Soho.

Curry feast

Curry feast